


Bristle

by Asher_2179



Category: Logan (2017) - Fandom, Wolverine (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Gen, Help, They are suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-14 09:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10533396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asher_2179/pseuds/Asher_2179
Summary: The something in her speaks to the something in him. Or, Laura's jumbled thoughts as she runs through the woods.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I saw this movie two weeks ago and I still can't stop thinking about it. 
> 
> Reviews are most welcomed
> 
> +++

Running feels like home.  
(Not that she's ever had a home. Or known what one feels like. It's an abstract concept, this home feeling, but she's familiar with the _idea_ of it. And running is pretty much the only thing she is intimately familiar with, now.)  
Of course, in a perfect world, she would be running for the sake of running, like a normal child her age. Running towards a lake or running for a bus. Running to chase a friend. Or maybe just running for the sheer joy of _running_ , just to see how fast your legs can take you.  
But this is not a perfect world, and she's running because her current situation demands it. Because her life depends on it.  
But if she has to run, if this is what she has to do, if this is the culmination of her years on this earth and those options previously mentioned are not for people like her ...   
... then she'd choose to run like this.

She can hear him, Logan  
(the _Wolverine_ )  
( _her father_ )  
running along some way behind her.  
The part that normally lives deep down inside her; the angry, bristly part with teeth and claws and fur, it can hear him too.  
That part normally resides somewhere behind the cage of her mind, whispering things to her. But as soon as the fear takes hold of her, cold fingers curling around her heart and gripping tight, the bristly part of her snarls and breaks through its cage to protect her. Like it always does. Now it's right up the front, steering her; guiding her; telling her when to jump, when to slash, when to duck and dive. Keeping her angry. And when she opens her mouth, it screams with her voice, and the two parts of her make a whole.

She can see it mirrored back in him. When his bristly part takes hold, he changes from the angry old man with sad eyes and hair gone sand-coloured with age, to the Wolverine of her comic books.  
The bristly part of her and the Wolverine part of him are one and the same.  
" _You'll know when_ ," he had said.  
Laura wouldn't have known, but the bristly part of her did.  
It made her jump onto his back and spring off so effortlessly it was like flying, and when her claws had sunk into the Reever with a delicious meaty thunk, it made her grin.  
A wolfish grin, all bared teeth.  
He had swung around to look at her, for a split second, wild eyes meeting hers. She had done what he had told her to. And he didn't say it, of course, but she thinks that if he'd been able to, he would have told her " _Good girl, Laura. Well done_."  
At least, it would have been his appropriation of those words.  
She would have like to have known what his appropriation would have been.

When the medicine wears off and the lines on his face, the scars, the years, they all come back.  
Doctor Rice tells him he won't survive.  
Laura's bristly part snarls.  
He shoots Dr Rice shortly after.  
_(Doctor Rice doesn't know everything.)_  
That's when they release the Weapon.  
Her bristly part propels her onto the back of it. She digs her claws in again and again and again until her hands are red with his blood and all she can hear is the roar of her _own_ blood, pounding in her ears, and her own feral screams.  
But it's no good.  
He doesn't have any other part to him, he's _all_ bristly.  
There's nothing else.  
She can't win against that. And Logan; no medicine and looking old and tired again, he definitely can't.  
She shoots him before he can kill Logan with his own hands, and watches his head crumple in a grizzled collapse of gory muck.  
She steps over the body and just like that, her bristly part is gone. Back in its cage like it had never been out. Minding its own business, and leaving plain old Laura to deal with what comes next.  
She feels tears welling up in her eyes, blurring her vision, and she swipes them away helplessly, wishing her bristly part were here to make her brave again.  
She can't sense any of his bristly part left either, the Wolverine part. It's already died.  
He's all Logan.  
It's Logan that grasps her hand, slick with blood, both hers and his. She hears her own voice, pleading. She sounds like a little baby, like a weak little kitten, and she hates it.  
She wants to be brave, like he is. He is dying, a tree branch stuck through his chest, and even without the Wolverine he is still brave.  
( _He's dying and_ he's _trying to comfort_ her!)  
He squeezes her hand tight, and his eyes find hers, and brave they may be, they are fading. Fading like the sun just before it sinks away at night, still brilliant and bright ...  
Until ...it's just  
_not._  
  
She puts her head on his stomach, his one hand still clutched in her two, and she reasons with herself.

She'll be brave.  
Brave for both of them.  
It's what he would have done.


End file.
